We must never hide our colours. There
are times when we must dash to the front and court the encounter, when we see
that our Captain's honour demands it. Let us neither be ashamed nor a afraid.
Our Lord Jesus deserves that we should yield ourselves as willing sacrifices in defense of his faith. Ease, reputation, life itself, must go for the name and
faith of Jesus. If in the heat of the battle our good name or our life must be
risked to win the victory, then let us say, "In this battle some of us must
fall; why should not I? I will take part and lot with my Master and bear
reproach for His sake." Only brave soldiers are worthy of our our Lord.
Those who sneak into the rear, that they may be comfortable, are not worthy of
the kingdom....
Everybody admires Luther! Yes, yes;
but you do not want any one else to do the same to-day. When you go to the
Zoological Gardens you all admire the bear; but how would you like a bear at
home, or a bear wandering loose about the street? You tell me it would be
unbearable, and no doubt you are right.
So, we admire a man who was firm in
the faith, say four hundred years ago; and the past ages are sort of a bear-pit
or iron cage for him; but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down.
Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of
one. Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their
compeers had said, "the world is out of order; but if we try to set it
right we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us
go to our chambers, put on our night-caps, and sleep over the bad times, and
perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better."
It is to-day as it was in the
Reformers' days. Decision is needed... We who have had the gospel passed to us
by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by
traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it. The
faith I hold bears on it the marks of my ancestors. Shall I deny their faith,
for which they left their native land to sojourn here? Shall we cast away the
treasure which was handed to us through prisons, or came to us charred with the
flames of Smithfield?
...Stand fast my beloved, in the name
of God! I, your brother in Christ, entreat you to abide in the truth. Quit
yourselves like men, be strong. The Lord sustain you for Jesus' sake. Amen.
Charles Spurgeon
